한국국제교류재단

There was a time when K-dramas had to be described using terms such as Korean “soap operas” or “series” or “mini-series,” but now they form a distinct category of their own. Pierce Conran, who writes about film and television, explores reasons for their popularity, and some international fans also give their views.

Lee Jung-jae gives his acceptance speech after winning the award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his role in “Squid Game” at the 74th Emmy Awards, held at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on September 12, 2022.
© YonhapNews

No matter the era, no matter the country, and no matter the medium, the most successful films and TV shows around the world have mostly served one basic function: providing escapist pleasure. This, for most viewers, is the primary function that entertainment serves in their busy and stressful lives.

Yet South Korea, one of the world’s top entertainment purveyors, is a bit of an anomaly in this sense. The list of box office hits partly reads like chapters in a tragic history book, while many of the TV dramas that break out internationally are dystopian tales foregrounding social inequality.

Western audiences have long looked to foreign markets (particularly Asian ones) for very specific forms of entertainment. In the 1970s, Hong Kong exported kung fu films, for example. More recently, Iran has become known to arthouse audiences for its sophisticated dramas.

But what about Korea? At the risk of pigeonholing other national industries, the Korean market has, for close to three decades, fostered a reputation for being endlessly dynamic. It is never any one thing and always in flux. No one knows what the next big thing will look like, which only adds to the industry’s allure of unpredictability.

While the styles and genres cycle at a furious speed, however, there are a couple of things that bind most Korean stories together. Chief among these is the desire to cast a mirror on society, whatever it may look like at that moment in time.

Six years ago, such attempts resulted in the global zombie smash “Train to Busan,” which weaved mayhem and pointed social allegory in a genre that had heretofore been anathema to the market. Three years after that, two things happened: Netflix launched its Korean original operations with the hit period zombie show “Kingdom,” and Bong Joon-ho conquered Cannes (and eventually the Academy Awards stage) with his acclaimed social parable “Parasite.”

In 2021, “Squid Game” did the unthinkable again, turning a grisly death-match drama into the most successful Netflix series of all time. With sophisticated production, genre thrills and digestible social themes that tap into global discontent, Korean content had finally gone truly global.

But diehard K-drama fans will balk at the suggestion that glossy genre series like “Kingdom” or “Squid Game” are what turned the K-drama medium into a global powerhouse. On the domestic front, Korean TV series have been spectacularly successful for decades, but they have also maintained a strong international contingent of fans for almost as long.

Near the start of the millennium, K-dramas were very popular in Japan, driving a wave of tourism as Japanese viewers travelled around the Korean Peninsula and Jeju Island to visit famous K-drama locations. This was when the industry was dominated by romcoms, melodramas and period dramas. The popularity of K-dramas spread to the rest of Asia, and, through pockets of Korean expats around the world, soon grew beyond the continent.

What has changed between then and now is the audience. The diehard fans of classic K-dramas, a bloc that had been steadily growing throughout the 2000s, was joined by a new group owing to the recent wave of Korean crossover hits, which has spurred different kinds of viewers to take a chance on Korean content.

These new K-drama viewers, who came in for the lavish and shocking dystopias, have now grown accustomed to the Korean screen culture. Now, anything Korean might draw their notice on Netflix, whereas earlier, the streamer’s algorithms would have kept K-dramas off their homepages.

In essence, the success of the attention-grabbing social genre series has opened the doors to an even broader audience that has come to embrace the softer pleasures of traditional K-dramas, spawning new international hits like “Crash Landing on You,” “Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha” and “Extraordinary Attorney Woo.”

With Western media dominated by superheroes and space operas, as well as socially minded “elevated horror,” Korean media is now filling a need that Hollywood has struggled to satisfy of late – feel-good content. In these troubled times of pandemics, wars and financial insecurity, viewers have been thirsting for gentle escapism, which traditional K-drama provides in spades.

Viewers around the world are now long familiar with Korean content. What the legions of recent converts may not realize is that the industry has continually been evolving to accommodate them. Violent shows like “Sweet Home,” “Squid Game” and “All of Us Are Dead” often receive lukewarm reactions when they launch at home. It is the strong international reaction to these shows that forces local viewers to reevaluate them and, in turn, inspires the industry to create more similar content.

On the other hand, many K-drama fans are quite conservative, particularly in Muslim countries like Indonesia. It is audiences in these countries that ensure that star-driven old-school romance remains chaste.

But just as the Hollywood dream can easily be broken, the image of Korea seen in K-dramas, with its bright colors, tailored frocks and beautiful stars, is also one that can be shattered. Today, with pandemic travel restrictions all but lifted, tourists are flocking back to Korea in big numbers. The country is also welcoming a new generation of young people from other countries who grew up enjoying K-content. Yet for some, it has been an eye-opening experience.

The reality of working for Korean companies (let alone navigating the local dating scene) could hardly be any more different from the candy-colored and ice Americano-fueled workplaces seen in K-dramas. Korean dramas are enjoyable and addictive, but they are precisely so because they’ve been designed as escapist entertainment. We can escape to these fantasy lands in our minds, but not in the real world.

Nida Karim
Age 32, Indian in Korea

 

Bridget McKeon
Age: 36, Australia

 

Nguyen Thi Thuy Lan
23, Vietnam

 

Joel D.
Age 71, American in Thailand